Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS) is known as an attempt to utilize a large amount of data collected from every driving, in a “natural” setting, of a vehicle by using in-vehicle sensors or the like, for an analysis of driver's characteristics and for an evaluation of a risk in the driving, as well as a look-ahead driving support or the like. See, for example, a non-patent document, S. Hallmark, D. McGehee, K. M. Bauer, J. M. Hutton, G. A. Davis, J. Hourdos, I. Chatterjee, T. Victor, J. Bargman, M. Dozza, H. Rootzen and J. D. Lee, C. Ahlstrom, O. Bagdadi, J. Engstrom, D. Zholud, and M. Ljung-Aust, “Initial Analyses from the SHRP2 Naturalistic Driving Study: Addressing Driver Performance and Behavior in Traffic Safety,” SHRP 2 Research Reports, SHRP 2 Safety Project S08, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, 2013.
In NDS, to versatilely utilize the collected data from everyday driving for various purposes, the drive data must be collected in every aspect of driving behavior or the like, without limiting/restricting the data type or driving situations, which may have already been tried and tested in a conventional probe car system that collects only a special purpose drive data.
In the conventional study of NDS, the data measurement and accumulation device is installed in a cooperator's vehicle, and the device is collected from the cooperator's vehicle after the collection of the raw drive data, to obtain the collected data.
However, if, in prospect, vehicles in general were targeted by NDS for such drive data collection with no-specific situations, the installation and collection of the data measurement device from the vehicles is not realistic.
Instead, the data collection from general vehicles may be performed via a communication network by wireless communication, which is more probable in terms of collecting drive data from many vehicles and accumulating the collected data in an information center.
The data from only one vehicle may be, however, pretty much large or may add up to a vast amount, since an attempt such as the NDS or similar studies does not put a restriction on the data type of the collected drive data, which may be a burden of the communication network.